The Descent to UDK Website reveals plans for a fan-developed remake of Descent, the six-degrees-of-freedom tunnel shooter from days gone by (thanks LittleMe). The UDK project is expected to be made available early next year, and this experimental gameplay trailer shows early progress towards that goal. Here is the project leader's outline of their first release:

a retelling of Descent's story

the original levels remade, with an emphasis on a thriller/horror atmosphere

remodeled and animated original robots with advanced AI

all the weapons from Descent with potential new ones mixed in

a high-detail Pyro-GX ship model with a 3D cockpit view

more diverse gameplay with a strong focus on the basics that made Descent great

Closed Betas wrote on Nov 11, 2012, 15:18:somethings are better left as great memories in the back of my mind.. I think this will be one of them.

Descent 2 multiplayer has to be one of the top 10 gaming experiences of all time. There is nothing like fully 3D multiplayer battles in a contained space/arena like Descent.

The real problem is the guys behind descent had crappy game design skills and basically stumbled into success. Descent 3 ended up selling poorly because they had no idea what they were doing. Levels were too big, getting rid of mines was a bad idea because you could no longer pace the action properly.

The terrain system was a giant wash because weapons in descent were designed for small scale battles inside arenas, not for huge distance outside flying. So descent 3 ended up failing at retail. Not to mention FPS games have basically encapsulated vehicular shooters making them redundant, people want things like Halo and Just cause and GTA where you can just have a world and choose to be man with a gun or jump in a vehicle. Being restrained to vehicles would never wash with a modern audience of a large size I don't think.

Reality is descent was also newbie unfriendly, most FPS gamers got slaughtered because they can't handle true 3D movement. That's why first person shooters caught on - they were easier to control and jump into then descent.

Descent being fully 3D gave people motion sickness as well. So it had a few things going against it.

On top of all that, I feel the game favored people who had a joystick with a hat switch, which was never a huge majority of PC gamers. I'm sure there are people who did great with mouse and keyboard, but I dunno; the one guy in my dorm who had the fancy Logitech stick just kept slaughtering the rest of us.